Sud Aviation Caravelle
French rear-engined twin-jet airliner, developed by SNCASE and produced by Sud Aviation. The first jet airliner designed with its engines mounted at the rear of the fuselage, it entered service in 1959, sold to airlines on every continent, and was built until 1972.
Why It Mattered
The Caravelle was the first jet airliner designed with its engines mounted on the rear of the fuselage. That placement left the wing free of engine nacelles and made the cabin noticeably quieter, and it also improved single-engine performance compared with wing-mounted designs. It was the first jet airliner produced in Europe outside England, built to a French government requirement for a medium-range airliner. The layout it introduced endured: rear-mounted engines and a clean wing were later retained in many narrow-body airliners and regional jets.
Design Notes
The Caravelle was developed by SNCASE in the early 1950s, and it drew on de Havilland designs and components developed for the Comet, the first jet airliner. Its two Rolls-Royce Avon turbojets sat at the back of the fuselage, allowing a clean, low wing with no engine mountings. Passengers looked out through distinctive triangular windows, a shape kept unchanged throughout the type's development. Later variants lengthened the formula: the 10 and 11 series switched to Pratt & Whitney JT8D turbofans, and the stretched Caravelle 12 could seat 131 passengers.
Operational History
The first Caravelle flew in 1955, and the type entered revenue service on 26 April 1959 with Scandinavian Airlines System. Airlines on every continent ordered it, a reach no earlier European jetliner had achieved. Production settled into a family of variants; the VI-R, developed to United Airlines' requirements and fitted with thrust reversers and spoilers to improve landing performance, began service with United in July 1961, and United took 20 of the 56 built. By 1963 there were six versions of the Caravelle in production. Production ran from 1958 to 1972, and 282 Caravelles were built in all. The type outlived its production run by more than three decades. The last airworthy example made the type's final flight at Gisenyi, Rwanda, in September 2004.
Afterlife
No Caravelle has flown since the type's last flight in September 2004, but survivors are preserved on both sides of the Atlantic. The Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson displays a Caravelle VI-R. In Paris, the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace preserves a Caravelle 12, the final, stretched version of the type. An early Caravelle III, delivered to SAS as Finn Viking, is preserved at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology in Oslo. Other survivors include nose sections kept by museums in Finland and the Netherlands.